Russian
Name: Jan K. Vollmer
Age: 34
Job: 3D Artist
Country: Germany
Web site: www.jankvollmer.de
3DA: How did you start working in 3D field? How much time has passed and what kind of studies did you do?
JV: I work for almost 10 years in the 3D industry now. I started in an event agency in my home town in Wuppertal. There was a not used pc with 3ds Max 3.1 and one day I started to do the first boxes and lights. From that moment I was banned to the 3D world.
From there on it was a long way to the standard I am on today. I did all in self education, the most with tutorials by Autodesk and later with the help of the internet. But the most important thing was to study the outside world! I always tried to get as close as possible to reality.
But the real breakthrough came with my first copy of Vray. With that fabulous render engine I got my first touch with global illumination in a very fast way.
From that point on I was stuck to architectural visualizations because vray gave me all the realistic touch I always wanted.
3DA: Which are your favorite software and plugins for your daily projects?
JV: I still work with 3ds Max 2012 design and Vray 2.0 in the main work. For architectural visualizations I also use multiscatter for the plants and of course Photoshop for the post work. I use a very powerful plug-in from laubwerk.com – it is a great tree generator for 3ds Max. That’s all I need for my daily work!
3DA: Tell us something about a project that gave you great satisfactions
JV: In the field of architecture visualization it’s almost all projects that I love! I am free as a bird in design and special in the setting of light. The light is in my opinion one of the most important things in the field of 3D. You have to think like a photographer to catch the right moment for that kind of visuals. You could be the greatest modeler on earth, but if you are not able to set the model in a nice light it would not work! From time to time we also have some big animation projects we work on. Like the New Year’s Eve show in Dubai. It was a big production for a show a several screens and a 240 meter screen witch had about 20.000 pixels in width!
To see that final production on New Year’s Eve live together with 2.2 billion people around the world is very nice too.
3DA: From where do you take inspiration for your artworks?
JV: The inspiration came from the real world! Also from great other artists around the world. Via Facebook it is much easier to be in contact with a lot of talented artists from everywhere and get a super-fast feedback from them to improve the work. Also a lot of good architects have a lot of nice work that I study! Special the Bauhaus style is something that inspires me a lot.
3DA: How do you live this period of economic crisis? How is it in your country?
JV: Here in Germany it is not as hard as in other European countries. But I also see that the budgets for projects are getting smaller. People want more for less. But I think that is just normal everywhere. It is more important that the quality of work still fits. I really hope that the economy will get better some day!
3DA: What would you suggest to people that are approaching to 3D and architecture?
JV: It is a hard business because there are a lot of good people out there! But if you have the passion for architecture, just go for it. Try to improve and always look up to artists that are better than you. Today you can find all the information you need on the internet. So it was never so easy to learn all that you need. But still study the real world outside. It’s the best teacher!
